[Foodplanning] News: high Pesticide Levels Found On Everyday Food Products

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http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/health/349263_pesticide30.html

Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Last updated 12:59 a.m. PT

Illustration Omitted:
  	Chensheng Lu, holding an apple from Pike Place Market, 
studied the pesticide levels in Mercer Island children. In the study, 
the children ate a variety of conventional produce from area 
groceries and then switched to organic.

Harmful pesticides found in everyday food products
      Mercer Island children tested in yearlong study

By ANDREW SCHNEIDER
P-I SENIOR CORRESPONDENT

Government promises to rid the nation's food supply of brain-damaging 
pesticides aren't doing the job, according to the results of a 
yearlong study that carefully monitored the diets of a group of local 
children.

The peer-reviewed study found that the urine and saliva of children 
eating a variety of conventional foods from area groceries contained 
biological markers of organophosphates, the family of pesticides 
spawned by the creation of nerve gas agents in World War II.

When the same children ate organic fruits, vegetables and juices, 
signs of pesticides were not found.

"The transformation is extremely rapid," said Chensheng Lu, the 
principal author of the study published online in the current issue 
of Environmental Health Perspectives.

"Once you switch from conventional food to organic, the pesticides 
(malathion and chlorpyrifos) that we can measure in the urine 
disappears. The level returns immediately when you go back to the 
conventional diets," said Lu, a professor at Emory University's 
School of Public Health and a leading authority on pesticides and 
children.

Within eight to 36 hours of the children switching to organic food, 
the pesticides were no longer detected in the testing.

The subjects for his testing were 21 children, ages 3 to 11, from two 
elementary schools and a Montessori preschool on Mercer Island.

The community has double the median national income, but the wealth 
of Mercer Island made no difference in the outcome, he said.

"We are confident that if we did the same study in poor communities, 
we would get the same results," he said. The study is being repeated 
in Georgia.

The study has not yet linked the pesticide levels to specific foods, 
but other studies have shown peaches, apples, sweet bell peppers, 
nectarines, strawberries and cherries are among those that most 
frequently have detectable levels of pesticides.

Measuring the harm

Lu is quick to point out that there is no certainty that the 
pesticides measured in this group of children would cause any adverse 
health outcomes. However, he added that a recent animal study 
demonstrated that persistent cognitive impairment occurred in rats 
after chronic dietary exposure to chlorpyrifos.

Death or serious health problems have been documented in thousands of 
cases in which there were high-level exposures to malathion and 
chlorpyrifos. But a link between neurological impairments and 
repeated low-level exposure is far more difficult to determine.

"There's a large underpinning of animal research for organophosphate 
pesticides, and particularly for chlorpyrifos, that points to bad 
outcomes in terms of effects on brain development and behavior," Dr. 
Theodore Slotkin, a professor of pharmacology and cancer biology at 
Duke University in North Carolina, said in the April 2006 
Environmental Health Perspectives.

Lu says more research must be done into the harm these pesticides may 
do to children, even at the low levels found on food.

"In animal and a few human studies, we know chlorpyrifos inhibits an 
enzyme that transmits a signal in the brain so the body can function 
properly. Unfortunately, that's all we know."

Not many chemicals, including pharmaceutical products, were designed 
specifically to kill mammals, which was genesis of organophosphates.

"It is appropriate to assume that if we -- human beings -- are 
exposed to (this class of) pesticides, even though it's a low-level 
exposure on a daily basis, there are going to be some health concerns 
down the road," said Lu, who is on the Environmental Protection 
Agency's pesticide advisory panel.

The EPA says it eliminated the use of organophosphates on many crops 
and imposed numerous restrictions on the remaining organophosphate 
pesticide uses.

Congressional concern that children were being harmed by excessive 
exposure to pesticides led to the unanimous passage of the Food 
Quality Protection Act. At its heart was a requirement that by 2006, 
the EPA complete a comprehensive reassessment of the 9,721 pesticides 
permitted for use and determine the safe level of pesticide residues 
permitted for all food products.

"As a result, the amount of these pesticides used on kids' foods (has 
undergone) a 57 percent reduction," said Jonathan Shradar, the EPA's 
spokesman.

But that's not nearly enough to prevent birth defects and 
neurological problems, said Chuck Benbrook, chief scientist of the 
Organic Center, a nationwide, nonprofit, food research organization.

"The pesticide limits that EPA permits are far, far too high to say 
they're safe. And, the reduction that EPA cites in the U.S. has been 
accompanied by a steady increase in pesticide-contaminated imported 
foods, which are capturing a growing share of the market," he said.

Yet the EPA continues to insist that "dietary exposures from eating 
food crops treated with chlorpyrifos are below the level of concern 
for the entire U.S. population, including infants and children."

That statement is "not supported by science," Benbrook said.

"Given the almost daily reminders that children are suffering from an 
array of behavioral, learning, neurological problems, doesn't it make 
sense to eliminate exposures to chemicals known to trigger such 
outcomes like chlorpyrifos?" he asked.

What to do

While the gut reaction of some parents might be to limit the 
consumption of fresh produce or switch completely to organic food, Lu 
cautions not to make the wrong decision.

"It is vital for children to consume significantly more fresh fruits 
and vegetables than is commonly the case today," he says, citing such 
problems as juvenile diabetes and obesity.

"Nor is our purpose to promote the consumption of organic food, 
although our data clearly demonstrate that food grown organically 
contains far less pesticide residues."

Lu says an all-organic diet is not necessary. He has two sons, 10 and 
13, and he estimates that about 60 percent of his family's diet is 
organic.

"Consumers," he says, "should be encouraged to buy produce direct 
from the farmers they know. These need not be just organic farmers, 
but conventional growers who minimize their use of pesticides."

Understanding how fruits and vegetables grow can help guide the 
consumer, he says.

For example, organic strawberries probably are worth the money 
because they are a tender-fleshed fruit grown close to the dirt, so 
more pesticides are needed to fight insects and bugs from the soil. 
He adds apples and spinach to his list.

"It may also be money-smart to choose conventionally grown broccoli 
because it has a web of leaves surrounding the florets, resulting in 
lower levels of pesticide residue," Lu says.

He is greatly concerned about one finding from the study.

"Overall pesticide (marker) levels in urine samples were even higher 
in the winter months, suggesting children may have consumed fruits 
and vegetables that are imported. The government needs to ensure that 
imported food comply with the standards we impose on domestic 
produce," he said.

Dangerous science

Chlorpyrifos, made by Dow Chemical Co., is one of the most widely 
used organophosphate insecticides in the United States and, many 
believe, the world.

For years, millions of pounds of the chemical insecticide were used 
in schools, homes, day care centers and public housing, and studies 
show that children were often exposed to enormously high doses. Just 
as the EPA was ready to ban the product, which analysts said would 
have damaged Dow's overseas sales, the company "voluntarily" removed 
it from the home market. Yet, with few exceptions, the agricultural 
uses continued.

The EPA's Web site is a study in contradictions when it comes to chlorpyrifos.

At one section, it "acknowledged the special susceptibility and 
sensitivity of children to developmental and neurological effects 
from exposure to chlorpyrifos."

But in another section, the agency reports that infants and children 
face no risk from eating food crops treated with chlorpyrifos. 
However, the agency doesn't say how it reached that conclusion. There 
is no agreement of how much of the neurotoxin is too much.

Benbrook said the EPA has refused orders from Congress to study the 
cumulative developmental risk to children from low-dose exposures.

"Perhaps we can rest assured that EPA has protected us adults from 
acute insecticide poisoning risk, but our kids are on their own," 
Benbrook said.

chart

ABOUT THE STUDY

Chensheng Lu's study was published this month in Environmental Health 
Perspectives (ehponline.org), a publication of the National Institute 
of Environmental Health Science. It was funded by the Environmental 
Protection Agency and used federal laboratories to confirm the 
accuracy of his findings.

Unlike many previous studies, Lu's team focused on children living in 
an urban/suburban area who were tested for multiple days in each of 
the four seasons with urine and saliva sampled twice a day.

The organic produce was sent to the Department of Agriculture lab in 
Yakima to be tested for pesticides. The Centers for Disease Control 
and Prevention tested the urine samples and the Food and Drug 
Administration laboratory is completing its quantification of 
pesticide residues in samples of the conventional food the children 
consumed.

The team included scientists from Emory University, the CDC and the 
University of Washington.


P-I senior correspondent Andrew Schneider can be reached at 
206-448-8218 or andrewschneider at seattlepi.com.

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